Have you ever heard: "A muslim scientist discovered gravity"? or maybe "The first psychiatric hospitals were built in Iraq"?

then you've felt the aftershock of when from 2005-2012 "Jagged 85" edited 80,000 Wikipedia articles to inject Islamic thinkers all over science! (thread)

For seven years, countless Wikipedia pages related to Psychology, Astronomy, Medicine had exaggerated claims or serious misinformation. The CLEANUP IS ON-GOING, many of these claims still exist (unnoticed!) and cited in many news sources, journal articles, and conference papers.

"Al-Hazen invented experimental Psychology in 1010" or "Avicenna mentioned psychosomatic disorders before anyone" are other examples of myths he started. But what's most interesting in all of this, is that he didn't get caught because academics or scholars noticed his mistakes -

- his love of confabulation and creating internet myths spread to... anime and video game pages. And he (and his many false edits) were found because otakus noticed errors on the Neon Genesis Evangelion AND Winx Club - thus unraveling the whole thing and prompting many edits.

It'd be an exaggeration to say that Jagged 85 prompted the resurgence of MENA/Arab scholars in "indigenizing" their social science fields - but it's a bit disheartening we (myself included) know anime, other "foreign" media and even research better than our history & philosophy.

This decade old Wikipedia stunt sheds light on how little everyone is capable of spotting errors and mistakes in purported contributions of Arab, North African, or Levantine thinkers / philosophers to modern day science and thought because WE ourselves don't seem to know them!

We aren't taught them, and the resources themselves are hard to find and often are unreliable. But why DON'T we understand their contributions better? Why DON'T we indigenize the histories of our fields more? Why don't WE do what Jagged 85 did - but accurately?

~~End of Thread~~

Currently working on a project that creates an "Arab History of Social Psychology" - DM for e-mail/ collabs!

And for those interested in the specifics, Jagged 85's edits can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/Jagged_85/Cleanup

Further reading:
https://ahp.apps01.yorku.ca/2008/02/presentism-in-the-service-of-diversty/
https://urfavmurtad.tumblr.com/post/176638704002/lol-i-used-to-wonder-this-too-turns-out-there-was